Expert Messengers and the Credibility of Foreign Propaganda Narratives
University of Kansas
November 20, 2025
“The principal cause of the conflict is the NATO decision to bring Ukraine into the alliance. There is no evidence from before 2022 that [Russian president Vladimir] Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine, that he was preparing a puppet government for Ukraine or pursuing any political measures that would make it possible to occupy the entire country.”
Who do you think said this?
John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago
“The largest issue in that conflict are these regions: Donbas, Crimea, Lugansk, and two others. They are Russian-speaking, and there have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.”
Steve Witkoff, the United States Special Envoy to the Middle East and United States Special Envoy for Peace Missions
Hypothesis 1: Attributing a foreign propaganda statement to a domestic expert increases belief in this statement
Hypothesis 2: Corrections and qualifications of foreign propaganda statements promoted by experts decrease belief in such statements
Empirical question: Do such corrections fully offset the “expert credibility premium?”
Figure 1: Perceived statement credibility based on the presence of expert attribution and factual corrections in the Mearsheimer and Witkoff experiments.
Figure 2: Perceived statement credibility based on the presence of expert attribution and factual corrections in the Mearsheimer experiment, depending on the respondent’s partisanship.
Figure 3: Perceived statement credibility based on the presence of expert attribution and factual corrections in the Witkoff experiment, depending on the respondent’s partisanship.
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